
Class 
Book 



SMITHSONIAN DEPOSIT 



/ 



V 

& 



ALLEGHENY MOUNTAINS 



A Description of their Glories, 

BY 

M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



The Famous Summer Resort, 

I resson, ." 

ON THE 

PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD. 



N THE HEART OF THE ALLEGHENIES. 



HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE. 



BY 

M. G. Van Rensselaer. 






_ 






PHILADELPHIA 

1885. 



Allen, Lane & Scott, Printers, 
Philadelphia. 






In the Heart of the Alleghenies. 



ON THE WAY. 



(9pJ 



(§T| ^HE White Mountains and the Green Mountains, the Adiron- 
dacks and the Catskills, are all well known to the tourists 
from our Eastern cities. Even the most confirmed stay-at- 
home cannot be unacquainted with their charms, — with the 
nature of their beauty and the interest of their traditions, — so fully 
have they been written about during a long course of years. But the 
Alleghenies, though as accessible as any of our mountain-ranges, 
and as beautiful in their way, are far less familiar to the health-seeker, 
the lover of the picturesque, and the reader of popular literature. 
They are looked upon, I fear, by the majority of those who approach 
their base, merely in the light of obstructions in a transcontinental 
journey. A few moments spent in wondering admiration of the 
" Horseshoe Curve " is perhaps the only tribute to their beauty paid 
by the average traveler. Broad reaches of rolling hill-tops lie out- 
spread before him, deep, narrow gaps and gorges run at right angles 

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to the railroad, offering vistas of the most seductive loveliness ; but 
the country is not a fashionable resort for tourists, and the fame of 
its beauties is but local. So the traveler goes on his way indiffer- 
ent, until chance or necessity, perhaps, forces upon him the intro- 
duction he would not seek. Dull and blind he must be, however, if 
more than a first experience is necessary to make him a lover of 
these mountains and a singer of their beauty ever after. Their 
physical charms, moreover, are supplemented by an historical 
record, which, in spite of the fact that it falls almost entirely within 
the present century, is not deficient in the romantic and adventurous 
incidents which mark the earlier history of places farther East. 

In order to get a sort of bird's-eye view of the district that shall 
fix its main features in our mind for reference when we come to 
speak in detail of things that are and things that were, let us first 
take a day-train from Harrisburg and go with it up to the mountain- 
top, past Cresson, and down again on the other side. The road we 
follow is the chief artery of the State of Pennsylvania, the channel 
through which flows the main current of its vast activity. But it is 
much more than a great local highway. It is also one of the chief 
lines by which the East and the West join hands across the conti- 
nent. The history of this railroad in its first beginnings, as we 
shall trace them later on, is a curious record not only of local 
enterprise but of early experiments in ''railroading" as well. It is 
but fifty years since those experiments were begun, yet the first road 
over the Alleghenies has been superseded and done away with. It 
has, indeed, passed not only out of use but almost out of mind. 
How many of the thousand daily passengers over the present track 
know that there was another steam-route — yes, two others— 
that preceded it? Even the picturesque remains of the pioneer 
road— does it seem strange to talk of " remains" in connection with 
anything so new as railroads, and of picturesqueness as a visible ele- 
ment therein ? — are as nearly forgotten as their history, both alike 



being known to few but local antiquaries and the summer-board- 
ers of the neighborhood, who are very generally from localities not 
far away. 

Leaving Harrisburg, with its outlying iron-works, which 
prophesy of the vast coal and iron industries that will meet us at 
every turn, our road follows the Susquehanna to its junction with 
the Juniata, and then clings for many miles to the beautiful banks 
of the latter stream. Noteworthy, even in comparison with the 
grandeur to come, when we shall reach the highest range, — the 
Allegheny proper, — are these smaller ranges. Most exquisite, es- 
pecially, is the gap where the Juniata breaks through its detaining 
hills. When Blair County is almost reached, the road curves to the 
north and then trends sharply in a southerly direction, so that we 
run into Altoona between two of the long north-and-south mountain 
ridges. Altoona is the metropolis of the mountains and the chief 
home of their iron industry in its second stage. Here the half- 
earthen mass is not taken in all its disheartening crudeness to be 
forced by the main strength of gigantic fires into shapely cubes of 
tractable material, but this already docile material is laid hold of for 
further educating, and is half coerced, half persuaded, seemingly, by 
machines that are almost human, nay, superhuman, in their working, 
into shapes whose variety, delicacy, strength, and accuracy are some- 
thing more than marvelous. In a word, this is not the city of iron- 
works proper, but of " shops," in the technical sense,— places which 
the visitor will find very unlike the haunts of femininity usually sug- 
gested by the word. These at Altoona are the railroad-shops, — 
labyrinthine, deafening, oleaginous, magical, fascinating birth-places 
of engine and of car. 

Passing on our road towards the places and things which just 
now more especially interest us, we begin the ascent of the Alle- 
gheny itself. Traversing the thirty-eight miles which lie between 
Altoona at the foot of the final ridge toward the east, and Johns- 



town, which we shall find at its western base, we are bewildered by a 
succession of magnificent views and splendid triumphs of engineer- 
ing skill. Nature and man alike have done their best at the famous 
Horseshoe Curve. Famous it is most justly. I have seen many 
magnificent roads in the older world, passes of Alps and Apennines, 
where the background of surrounding peaks is far sublimer and the 
panorama extends itself over many more miles of length, — places, 
too, where the engineer had even harder problems to solve than 
here. But all the same I can recollect no one spot where the road 
takes so superb a line and where the work of man so seems to but 
complete an original intention of nature herself. We have been told 
often enough that railroads are the devil's work when they meddle 
with nature that is sublime or lovely. But here, at least, the iron 
line and steed seem as if invented by some aesthetically-minded 
Titan to fit a route no other steed could so appropriately travel. 

The wonderful curve being passed, the road still carries us up 
and up, along a line scarcely less bold and beautiful, till we suddenly 
plunge into a long tunnel, which, piercing as it does the loftiest peak 
we shall touch, brings us to our highest level. We run out into the 
light again at Gallitzin, — a curious name, we think, to meet us here 
amid relics of Indian nomenclature and titles derived from the mod- 
ern industries of fire and iron. In it, with its strange suggestion of 
things foreign, warlike, and here most alien, we have our first intro- 
duction to the man who was settler and evangelizer of the country 
hereabouts. Insignificant though it be in itself, Gallitzin is yet the 
topmost point of the great highway, and so does him good and 
merited service in forcing his name upon the notice, and his memory 
upon the mind of every traveler from east to west and from west to 
east. From Gallitzin we run along a mile or so to Cresson, and 
thence, by descending grades less steep and less boldly picturesque 
than those of the eastern slope, glide down to Johnstown, where our 
westward journey is to end. 



CRESSON SPRINGS. 

Cresson Spings is not a village even. It is but the ''Mountain 
House," with its cluster of dependent cottages, space for which 
has been cleared in a natural grove, principally of maple trees. 
There are said to be three miles of well-laid-out walks and drives 
within the hotel-grounds, while beyond those grounds, on more 
sides than one, we have the almost untouched forest before us. 
The winding little paths that have been cut for our benefit here 
and there scarcely affect the primitive wildness of its aspect. The 
place is owned by the railroad, and one of its chief recommenda- 
tions is the fact that it is in such easy communication with the rest 
of the world. The mails come and go at all hours, and every 
passenger-train bound east or west stops before its door. The 
grounds of the hotel reach down to the track, but the hotel itself 
is at the top of a gentle slope, and so shut off by trees that there 
is no unpleasantness in the proximity. The weather is usually of 
delicious coolness, — for are we not two thousand feet above the sea? 
The country is exquisite for walking or driving, but especially for 
riding purposes. The abundant springs which supply the house 
are as pure as water can be, and their negative virtues are supple- 
mented by the curative power of the iron springs which have long 
been known to the faculty. Although a room in the hotel proper 
would scarcely be the place for study, I can imagine no better 
headquarters for a student who desired either to work or to rest 
than one of the pretty cottages with shady porches that are close 
at hand. I can speak from experience of many long weeks spent 
in such a one. Books were plenty ; hammocks swung under the 
trees conduced to study or to laziness with happy impartiality ; there 
was all the privacy of a summer home with absolutely no care for 
the morrow. Only, the hospitable private cottages, with their cus- 
tom of mid-day tea, and all-day cordiality, were rather subversive 

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of good resolves as to spending one's morning in a profitably busy 
retirement. 

The great drawback to the picturesqueness of the neighbor- 
hood is the entire lack of visible water, incident to a position at 
the very crest of a water-shed, and this lack deprives one, of course, 
of that chief delight in some mountain-districts, — facilities for boat- 
ing and fishing. It must be confessed, indeed, that there is very lit- 
tle "to do" at Cresson in the way the term is understood by the 
energetic pleasure-seeker. The big new hotel built in 1881 has 
provided, it is true, greater social resources of a general character 
than were to be found in the quaint old building which till then 
had borne the name of Mountain House. For the railroad and 
for the average guest the change is undoubtedly for the better, as 
it is for every one in the way of physical comfort. But to some 
of us the "improvements" have lessened the attraction that Cres- 
son offered in its humbler days. It is now a place like many oth- 
ers. It was then unique in its way to those who had been long 
accustomed to the caravansaries of our Eastern coast, though very 
likely not to such as were more familiar with the nooks and cor- 
ners of the Pennsylvania hills. It is no longer what it was once 
called, the "Pittsburgh Nursery," peopled almost exclusively by a 
sociable coterie from the Smoky City in search of health and 
pleasure for troops of pretty children. It is no longer a place 
where an unaccustomed face was a rarity, and won, therefore, a 
more friendly greeting than can now be given when the great house 
is crowded with visitors from every part of the West and South. 
The private cottages still house the same kind Pittsburghers, but 
their individuality and coherence are swamped in the foreign throng. 

When seeking information as to the origin and history of 
Cresson, I was referred to a gentleman who was said to be "a per- 
fect magazine of Pennsylvanian history. ' ' By this happy chance I 
was introduced to the memory of a man who deserved at least 



a passing word of tribute from every lover of the Allegheny. 

" Cresson itself," runs a part of my correspondent's answer, 
" was the outcome of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and was born of 
the brain and energy of my friend Dr. R. M. S. Jackson, a man of 
genius and fine culture, who once made his home on that wild 
mountain. He was a physician, a geologist, a mineralogist, and, in- 
deed, a scientist of wide and accurate knowledge. An enthusiastic 
love of mountain-life led him to make his home on the old high- 
way near Cresson when the railroad was being built, and, conceiv- 
ing the idea of establishing a great sanitary institution on the mount- 
ain, he, with Mr. J. Edgar Thomson, purchased the tract of land 
now Cresson Springs and induced the directors of the railroad 
to transport to its present location at Cresson the building which 
had been their hotel at the foot of the mountain. He was a friend 
of Leidy, Leslie, and many other eminent naturalists. His house 
on the mountain, since destroyed by fire, was the resort of many 
of the most distinguished literary and scientific men of the day, and 
among his correspondents were Emerson, Dr. Furness, and Charles 
Sumner, whom he entertained for a month, in September, 1856, 
when he was suffering from the blows inflicted by Brooks, of South 
Carolina, in the Senate-chamber. In fact, his treatment, as Sumner 
often told me afterward, first put him on the way of such restored 
health as he ever had. 

"Jackson wrote a most curious and interesting book called 
' The Mountain, ' full of practical and scientific information about 
that region, its flora, fauna, its springs, climatology, etc., and to 
prove that it was the great sanitarium of America. His dream was 
to make Cresson the resort and the place of restoration for all forms 
of human suffering ; but protracted litigation with unsympathizing 
natives who challenged his title, and the usual unbusinesslike habits 
of a man of genius, plunged him into financial difficulties which de- 
feated his purpose by depriving him of his interest in the property. 



But, for all that, Cresson, with whatever of attraction it has, is the 
offspring of Jackson's conception and efforts. He had hoped to be 
surgeon-in-charge there, but, with characteristic enthusiasm, when 
the war broke out, in 1861, he offered his services as surgeon of a 
marching and fighting regiment of Pennsylvania volunteers, and, 
after an active and toilsome experience on many a well-fought field, 
he died, being then surgeon-in-charge of the extensive hospital on 
Lookout Mountain. How much you Cresson people have lost by 
his death !" 

From the Mountain House itself there is no very extended view 
to be had, embowered in trees as it is, and occupying a shallow val- 
ley just below the highest hill-top. If we take the Hollidaysburg 
turnpike, however, which crosses the railroad just by the hotel and 
climbs the hill behind it, we shall find, when half a mile or so has 
brought us to the hill-top, that we have reached the little village of 
Summitville. From the level crest just back of " The Summit," as 
the place is called in local parlance, we have a wonderful view, by 
which we can judge as to what is the peculiar type of Allegheny 
beauty. For mountain-ranges are as individual as is the outline of 
any solitary peak, and there is one glory of the Adirondacks and 
another glory of the Alleghenies. There is far less grandeur of a 
wild sort here, — no commanding peaks, and little boldness of out- 
line. But what is lost in wildness is gained in harmony and grace. 
The views in this region are very varied, of course. There are 
points not far away whence we get a sight of some of the numerous 
" gaps,"— of valleys deep and narrow, or very broad and sloping. 
But such a prospect as this one from the summit is peculiarly char- 
acteristic of the Allegheny. Looking northward over the shallow 
depression where Cresson lies and the railroad runs, we see nothing 
but a reach of high-rolling table-land. But what a reach it is !— so 
vast and broad and gently broken by the multitudinous round hill- 
tops that it seems as if our power of vision had been enlarged so as 



to embrace a myriad miles. There never was such a chance for 
color to show itself in all the tender grades of brown and green and 
yellow, unified by the blue haze of distance and the gray and pur- 
ple shadows of the clouds. It is these last which give the crowning 
charm to the landscape. They have full sweep over the wonderful 
wide highlands, and by their magic the conformation of its surface 
seems to alter in the most marvelous and inexplicable way moment 
by moment as we watch. 

The drives are very beautiful through all this region. It is hard 
to say which are the more lovely, the open highways, where the eye 
sweeps the far-receding hill-tops, or the narrow, dark, and odorous 
tunnels through the forest primeval. Its forests are the best glory of 
the Allegheny. In some parts where they are comparatively open, 
as on the drive to Gallitzin, parallel with the railroad, but a mile or 
so farther south, the undergrowth of ferns is splendid in its profusion. 



THE PORTAGE ROAD— Old and New. 

If we try now the turnpike from the Summit to Hollidaysburg, 
we shall find a road so steep and so rough with stones that our prog- 
ress will be but slow. But the scenery is beautiful and in the 
greatest contrast to the broad panorama that was spread before us 
at the Summit. We are climbing down the cleft called Blair's Gap, 
the highest pass, I believe, through the Allegheny, and the mount- 
ain-tops rise steep and close on either side of us. Before we 
have gone very far, certain things will meet our eye that are not a 
usual sight in a district so new as this. We are not apt to find ruins 
of any kind in this fatherland of ours, and it seems doubly extraor- 
dinary to find them here in the wilderness, and to find them so pict- 
uresque. What was the origin, one cannot but wonder, of the iso- 
lated stone viaduct-arches that we pass, now going over one and 



now under the other ? What is the meaning of yonder vast piece of 
masonry which shores up, as it were, the mountain-side, and seems 
to have supported a road which climbed around and clung to that 
narrow ledge so far above our heads ! Why were such things built 
in this thinly-peopled place ? and, if they were needed, why have 
they so soon served all their purpose and been given over into the 
hands of time and of neglect ? Our driver, whether indigenous or 
merely attached to Cresson by a long course of summer-visiting, is 
sure to take an interest in the local antiquities, and there will be a 
touch of pride in his voice as he tells us that all these things were 
once part and parcel of the " Old Portage Road." There may also 
toe a hint of scorn or incredulity in his look when he finds that his 
information does not enlighten us very much, but that we are still 
rather vague and unimpressed. 

Let us now take another road from the Summit and drive west- 
ward for four or five miles toward the mining village of Lilly. Was 
there ever such a misnomer, by the way, for a gritty, grimy, hideous 
little town, where it is hard to say which are the blacker, the people 
or their habitations ? We have followed hither a broad highway, 
which, to keep an approximate level, cuts more than once through 
the elevations along its way. The road is broader and more carefully 
graded than is usual with the turnpikes hereabouts, and in many 
places, moreover, we see large square blocks of stone embedded in 
the highway a few feet from each other. This road too, we shall be 
told, with other similar stretches between this and Johnstown, was 
once a part of the " Old Portage." 

If we try at last to understand just what was this highway, — 
which in the year 1835 is said to have carried twenty thousand pas- 
sengers and fifty thousand tons of freight, that being the first season 
of its completed existence, and travel only possible while the canals 
that joined it were open, — we shall find some difficulty in getting ac- 
curate information. It was a system of planes and levels, we shall 



13 

be told, where cars were drawn up and let down the inclines by- 
means of ropes, and even canal-boats transferred over the top of the 
Allegheny,— so that a craft which had been launched in the Chesa- 
peake might ultimately find itself in the Gulf of Mexico. This 
brings us, by the way, to note the fact that at Cresson and the Sum- 
mit we are at the very ridge of the water-shed which divides the 
great drainage-system of the eastern coast from that of the Missis- 
sippi Valley. The hollows and dells of the neighborhood discharge 
their waters in opposite directions with apparent causelessness ; and 
there is a place on the little branch-road from Cresson to Ebens- 
burg where two springs are pointed out on opposite sides of the 
track, one of which contributes its mite to the Eastern and the 
other to the Southern system. 

But to return to the Portage. Local information is so vague, 
proud as the natives are of their ruins, — for things are soon forgot- 
ten in this progressive land, where fifty years makes them thrice an- 
tiquated, — that we shall have to look for some printed source 
whence to get our facts. Even this is not readily to be found. That 
there should be no popular and easily-accessible account of such a 
work as this proves how completely it has been neglected by lovers 
of the picturesque as well as by those curious in the history of early 
engineering and of the enterprise and pluck of a generation past. 
It is to be hoped that my readers will pardon a page or two of what 
some may call rather "dry " reading ; for the undertaking of which 
we are to speak seems to me of sufficient interest and importance to 
warrant a little serious description. 

In the year 1830 a canal was completed from Pittsburgh to 
Johnstown, at the western base of the main ridge of the Alleghenies. 
Eighty-two miles of railroad ran from Philadelphia to Columbia, and 
thence another canal went as far as Hollidaysburg, which was at the 
eastern slope of the range in question. Now, if these two canals 
could be joined in some way, the first continuous route, other than 



14 

the turnpike roads, would be made through the State, and the East- 
ern and Western States would be put in direct communication. Sur- 
veys were started with a view to prolonging the canals over the 
whole distance, but that idea was abandoned as impracticable. In 
the year 1831 a law was passed authorizing the Canal Commissioners 
of Pennsylvania to begin the construction of a "Portage Railroad" 
from Johnstown to Hollidaysburg, a distance of about thirty-six 
miles, in which twelve hundred feet of ascent would have to be cov- 
ered on the western and fourteen hundred on the eastern and steeper 
slope. Mr. Sylvester Welch was named engineer in charge of the 
work, Mr. W. Milnor Roberts his principal assistant for the division 
of the eastern slope, and Mr. Solomon Roberts, to whom we are to- 
day indebted for our information about the road,* his principal 
assistant for the western division. The general design, says Mr. 
Roberts, for the Portage Road was this : " The principal part of the 
elevation was to be overcome by inclined planes, which were to be 
straight in plan and profile, to be on an average somewhat less than 
half a mile long, and to have an angle of elevation of about five de- 
grees, or about the same as moderately steep hills on turnpike roads, 
so that the average height overcome by each plane might be about 
two hundred feet. These planes were to be worked by stationary 
steam-engines and endless ropes. As ultimately constructed, there 
were ten inclined planes, five on each side of the mountain, and their 
whole length was four miles and four-tenths, with an aggregate eleva- 
tion of two thousand and seven feet. * * * The planes were all 
straight, and the descent on each plane was regular from the top to 
a point about two hundred feet from the bottom, the last two hun- 
dred feet having a gradually diminishing inclination. * * * The 



* " Reminiscences of the First Railroad over the Alleghany Mountains." Read 
before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1878, and puhlished in the " Pennsyl- 
vania Magazine for History and Biography." 



15 

railroad between the planes was located with very moderate grades. 

* * * It was determined to grade the road at once for a double 
track, and to build all the bridges and culverts of stone. There was 
no wooden bridge on the line. In the case of one small bridge of 
two spans which had to be built at an oblique angle, I proposed an 
iron superstructure, but the plan was not approved. * * * Great 
care was taken with the drainage of the road-bed, and a large num- 
ber of drains and culverts were built, there being one hundred and 
fifty-nine passages for water under the road." 

The road as first used had only one track, with "turn-outs," on 
the levels, but a double track on the inclined planes. The rails were 
imported from Great Britain and hauled on trucks from Huntingdon 
on the Juniata River. "The rails were supported by cast-iron chairs. 

* * * In most cases these chairs rested upon and were bolted to 
blocks of sandstone." Many of these blocks, as I have said, are 
still to be seen embedded in the roadway, from which the rails, of 
course, have disappeared. " On the inclined planes, which were to 
be worked by means of ropes, flat bar-rails were laid upon string- 
pieces of timber. * * * At the head of each plane were two 
engines of about thirty-five horse-power each. * * * One engine 
only was used at a time ; but two were provided, for greater secur- 
ity. * * * For the prevention of accidents, safety-cars were used 
upon the inclined planes, which prevented any serious accident, by 
acting as a drag, or break-shoe, so as to stop the cars and prevent 
them from running down the plane. * * * 

"On the 26th of November, 1833, about two years and a half 
from the beginning of the work, the first car passed over the road. 

* * * On the 18th of March, 1834, when canal navigation opened, 
the Portage Road was opened for use as a public highway, the State 
furnishing the motive power on the inclined planes only, and it con- 
tinued in use until the canals were closed for the winter. The rail- 
road was again opened on the 20th of March, 1835, shortly after 



i6 

which the second track was completed. * * * The cost of the 
road at the close of the year 1835 was one million six hundred and 
thirty-four thousand three hundred and fifty-seven dollars and sixty- 
nine cents at the contract prices. This did not include office-ex- 
penses, engineering, or some extra allowances made to contractors, 
etc. * * * Nor did it include the cost of locomotives and cars." 

The way in which we are told the road was first managed is in 
curious contrast to the modes of railroad government approved to- 
day. As has been said, the State furnished the motive power on the 
planes only. No steam was used on the level tracks, and they were 
considered public highways, to be traversed by every man as he saw 
fit. "Everyman for himself," says Mr. Roberts, "was considered 
to be the popular way to run a railroad. * * * Individuals and 
firms had their own drivers, with their own horses and cars. The 
cars were small, and had four wheels, and each car would carry 
about seven thousand pounds of freight. Usually four cars made a 
train, and that number could be taken up and as many let down an 
inclined plane at one time, and from six to ten such trips could be 
made in an hour. * * * The experiment of thus working the 
road as a public highway was very unsatisfactory. * * * The 
drivers were a rough set of fellows, and sometimes very stubborn 
and unmanageable. It was not practicable to make them work by a 
time-table, and the officers of the railroad had no power to discharge 
them." 

The "popular" mode of procedure was especially unfortunate 
in its results while there was but one track on the levels between the 
"turn-outs." So long as this was the case, "a large post, called a 
centre-post, was set up half-way between two turn-outs, and the 
rule was made that when two drivers met on the single track with 
their cars the one that had gone beyond the centre-post had the 
right to go on, and the other that had not reached it must go back to 
the turn-out which he had left. The road was in many places very 



17 

crooked, and a man could not see far ahead. The way the rule 
worked was this : when a man left a turn-out he would drive very 
slowly, fearing he might have to turn back, and as he approached 
the centre-post he would drive faster and faster, to try to get beyond 
it and drive back any car that he might meet. In this way cars have 
been driven together and a man killed by being crushed between 
them." 

It did not take very long for the people to be convinced that this 
was not the best way of managing things. The Canal Commission- 
ers' report for 1837 speaks of ''the excitement which has been up 
against the inclined planes of the commonwealth," and says it arose 
"from the bad management they had received. The delays and 
accidents that attended them resulted from inexcusable or willful 
negligence, and were not chargeable to failure in the planes to ac- 
complish what had been expected of them." Very soon the use of 
horses was entirely done away with.* The first locomotive used on 
a level was "a light engine with one pair of driving-wheels, which 
were made of wood with iron hubs and tires. The fuel used was 
wood, and the engine ran readily around short curves, and, although 
its power was not great, the machine worked well and gave satis- 
faction." The engines, of course, did not pass over the planes. 
After steam was introduced along the whole line of the route, the 
time consumed to transfer passengers over its thirty-six miles was 
about four hours. 

An account of the tribulations of the engineer corps during the 
progress of the work gives us an idea of the savage nature of the 
district even fifty years ago. Traveling had to be done on foot all 
along the line of work, and it may be conceived that it was not trav- 



* There is a discrepancy in our authorities as to just when this occurred. Mr. 
Roberts says, in 1835 already ; but in the Commissioners' report for 1837 their use is 
strongly recommended, and the engineer promises to introduce them as soon as 
possible. 



i8 

eling of a very comfortable kind. The surface of the country was 
very rough, and progress much impeded by fallen timber. The 
work was begun by clearing a track one hundred and twenty feet 
wide through a dense forest of heavy spruce and hemlock. The 
climate was very severe, and in summer the insects were a terrible 
scourge and rattlesnakes were so plenty that the chief amusement 
of the workmen consisted in catching them alive. 

In spite of all the difficulties coincident with the building of a 
road through a pathless wilderness, urged on by the haste of a 
pressing public need, and shackled to a certain extent by State 
interference and the bickerings of political parties, Mr. Roberts says, 
reviewing the work after a lapse of fifty years, and in all the light that 
more recent achievements have thrown upon it, " It appears to me 
that the locating was about as well done as could be expected under 
the circumstances as they then existed. Railroad construction was a 
new business, and much had to be learned from actual trial ; but it 
was known at the time that the location was too much hurried, 
which arose from the great impatience of the public. A good deal 
of curvature might have been avoided by a careful revision of the 
line, but the reduction of the height of the summit by a tunnel, as 
has since been done, the Legislature refused to permit. * * * 
At that time the importance of straightness in a railroad was not 
adequately appreciated." The summit of the Portage Road, at the 
present village of Summitvile, was two thousand three hundred and 
twenty-two feet above mean tide, or one hundred and sixty-one feet 
higher than the level of the present tunnel at Gallitzin. 

" We were striving," says the engineer, " to build a great public 
work to endure for generations, and, as it turned out, it was super- 
seded by something better in about twenty years. * * * 
I may here mention the fact that in 1851 the State began the con- 
struction of a road to avoid the inclined planes, with a maximum 
grade of seventy-five feet per mile, and a summit tunnel about two 



'9 

thousand feet long.* Parts of the old line were used, and the road 
was lengthened about six miles. A single track was laid down, and 
was in use in 1856, but in the following year the whole work, as a 
part of the main line, was sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad Com- 
pany." 

Work intended to last for generations does indeed seem to have 
ill fulfilled its object, admirably as it played its part at the time and 
indispensable as it then was, when one is obliged to record that not 
only the original Portage Road but also this later work, known as 
the "New Portage," has ranged itself among the almost-forgotten 
relics of the past. Even the long summit tunnel is abandoned, I 
am told, though the one in use to-day runs very near it. Another 
tunnel belonging to the first road and cutting through a spur of the 
mountain three miles east of Johnstown, nine hundred and one feet 
in length and about twenty feet in width and height, has also been 
long deserted. It surely deserves a better fate than the premature 
oblivion which has overtaken it, from the fact that it was the first 
railroad-tunnel in the United States. A citizen of Johnstown amused 
me not long ago by relating the dangerous feat he accomplished by 
driving through it in a buggy, a thing which no one, to his knowl- 
edge, had attempted for many years. The darkness, of course, 
was utter, and the risk arose from the possible previous falling of 
rocks to block the way or upset his carriage, and from the washing 
of holes in the roadway. The only structure connected with either 
portage now put to service is, I believe, the great viaduct which was 



* Long before this— so early as the year 1837, indeed— we find that the doing 
away with the planes had already been discussed. The Canal Commissioners for 
that year combat the project, while acknowledging the fact that it would have been 
wiser in the beginning to have so constructed the road. It is amusing, in comparison 
with the way time is considered on the railroads of to-day, to note their explanation 
that at the best only an hour and a half could be gained by the change, — in a 
distance of thirty-six miles ! 



20 

the pride of the older route, and which crosses the bend of the 
Conemaugh eight miles east of Johnstown. It is very substantial 
and handsome, seventy-five feet in height, with a single semicircular 
arch of eighty feet span, and built of light-colored, dressed sand- 
stone. The lover of the picturesque may be excused for preferring 
its solid beauty to the effect of an iron structure of the kind that 
would now be erected by the railroad in such a place. 

If we drive once more from the Summit down toward Hollidays- 
burg, we shall see portions of the old road which are now inaccessible 
to wheels, but which sometimes form most exquisite bridle-paths. 
The roadway passes now under, now over, the turnpike by means of 
the viaduct-arches of which I have spoken, and its grass-grown track 
appears and disappears in the most perplexing manner. Numerous 
trips up and down the mountain will, indeed, scarcely leave us 
with more definite ideas than we had in the beginning as to just 
what course this part of the road pursued when it was in working 
order. 



A MISSIONARY PRINCE. 

In no State has a greater number or variety of nationalities gone 
to make up a now Americanized population than in Pennsylvania. 
And in no county is this better exemplified than in Cambria. It 
contains to-day, of course, many men of all nations and from all 
sections of our own, drawn thither by its vast mining and manufac- 
turing industries. But, in addition to this, we shall find, if we go 
back to the history of its first settlement, that it was peopled, not 
from one source, and not by chance accretions from many sources, 
but mainly by three distinct waves of immigration. First we hear 
of Pennsylvania Germans from the eastern part of the State, who 
settled the westerly portion of the county about Johnstown. Then 



21 

came large numbers of American Catholics from Maryland and the 
adjacent parts of Pennsylvania, many of them descendants of the 
famous colony of Lord Baltimore. These established themselves at 
Loretto, as it came afterward to be called, and in its vicinity. They 
were in part of Irish and in part of German extraction. The third 
important source of population was a large party of sturdy Welsh- 
men, fresh from their mother-country, who founded Ebensburg, now, 
as then, the county seat, and named both it and the county itself. 
Their history is that of common-place prosperity, and it is not of 
them nor of the German Protestant colony that I would speak in 
detail, but of the Catholic community, around the annals of which 
clusters all the poetry of a district much wider than Cambria County, 
— if indeed by such a name I may call the tales of poverty and priva- 
tion and rough endeavor, of superstition and self-sacrifice and fer- 
vid piety, which form the historical and legendary treasure of the 
Alleghenies. 

The early settlers of the Allegheny would, however, be passed 
over with but scant attention amid the mass of similar pioneers who 
have smoothed the rough ways and made plain the paths for us from 
side to side of our broad continent, were not their struggles and 
successes identified so closely with the name of Gallitzhi;in .wbpse 
story there are elements of romance and striking lights of contrast 
such as we do not find very often even in the biography of a mis- 
sionary priest. Others have been as bold, as self-denying, as rudely 
tried and poorly rewarded, as he, and have accomplished as much 
or more in the way of practical results. But of none, I think, can it 
be said that he was so isolated in his work or so exclusively entitled 
to the credit of the results. And it is certain that few men have 
given up so much as he for their work's sake. It is the brilliant 
story of his early youth, and the thought of the splendid career that 
might have been his had he not freely chosen his lonely and toilsome 
lot, that cast about the memory of Demetrius, Prince Gallitzin, and 



parish priest of Loretto, a tinge of romance that is wanting to the 
story of even his most adventurous and most devoted compeers.* 

The name of Gallitzin is familiar in our ears, not through the 
exploits of one famous man, but from its constant recurrence in the 
annals of Russia, borne by a succession of soldiers and statesmen 
high for many generations in the offices and honors of their native 
land. The father of our prince was born in 1728, and was a diplo- 
mate in the service, successively, of the Empresses Elizabeth, Anna, 
and Catherine II. He was ambassador for fourteen years at Paris, 
where he was the friend of Voltaire, D'Alembert, and Diderot, and 
afterward at the Hague, where his son was born in 1770. The only 
other child was a sister older than Demetrius, or, to use the pretty 
Russian diminutive by which he was called, "Mitri." The prince's 
wife was Amalia von Schmettau, daughter of the celebrated Prussian 
field-marshal and sister of the general of that name. She was a woman 
:>f fine mind and the strongest character, f Although beautiful, young, 
and fMed, she withdrew after a very few years from all society save 
such as furthered her purpose, with the intention of educating herself 
and her children. Residing apart from her husband, who was de- 
tained at his post by the duties of his position, but always in the 
most frien^iy communication with him, she traveled all over Europe 
with her children, settling wherever the prospects seemed best for 
the thorough training she had planned, and which she always super- 
intended herself. The greater part of Mitri's school-days were spent 
at Minister, in Westphalia, where there was a Catholic college. The 



* A biography of Gallitzin was written a number of years ago by a German 
priest named Lemcke. The materials contained therein, together with much new 
matter drawn from the prince's own papers, have been used by Miss Sarah H. 
Brownson in her " Life of Gallitzin," published in 1873. From this most interest- 
ing book the greater number of the following facts have been selected. 

t Dr. Katercamp's life of this princess, and her own " Tagebuch und Brief- 
;chsel," may be consulted for an account of a woman remarkable even in that 
cjtyy of striking personalities. 



23 

princess chose it not at all for sectarian reasons, for she had never 
professed to believe in any form of Christianity and had never in- 
structed her children in religion, but solely for its superior advan- 
tages as a place of secular training-. Through long association with 
its professors, however, she was at last induced to embrace Cathol- 
icism, after, as we are told, having studied and meditated on the 
subject for three years from the time when she first acknowledged 
its claim upon her attention. It is needless, perhaps, to say that, 
with her strong mind and quick emotional nature, she became the 
most enthusiastic of devotees and the most indefatigable of propa- 
gandists. Many years later she was instrumental in bringing into 
her Church the Count von Stolberg, whose conversion stirred politi- 
cal and philosophical Germany from end to end, and who became 
himself the instrument of the no less noted conversion of Friedrich 
von Schlegel. 

In the year 1787, when he was seventeen years old, the young 
prince joined his mother's church. Strangely enough, the fact gave 
her little pleasure at the time, for such seemed then to her to be the 
weakness and indecision of his character that she regarded the pro- 
fession of his faith rather as a proof of thoughtlessness or pliability 
than as a vital and determinate act. His father was deeply grieved 
at the occurrence. Mitri had been intended from his birth for a 
Russian officer, and had been educated with that end in view. His 
father, a man of fine intellect and upright character, had no belief in 
religion of any sort, but knew that it was wise — indeed, in a manner, 
requisite — that a Russian soldier should profess, if any, the Greek 
faith of his countrymen. He could but trust that time would accom- 
plish what his wife feared it might, and prove Mitri's conversion but 
a freak or a temporary mood of thought. 

Mitri's education finished, there were still two years to spare ere 
he could enter upon the active exercise of his profession. Many 
plans for improving them were suggested, none of which could be 



24 

carried into effect, owing to the disturbed state of Europe, where 
the French Revolution had just broken out. After much discussion, 
it was decided that he should go to America, to study the new repub- 
lic which had so recently drawn the eyes of Europe upon itself. 
General Von Schmettau suggested that he should give his nephew 
letters to Washington and put him under the personal supervision 
of the first President. But this was opposed, for reasons that to-day 
seem strange enough to be amusing and, I think, worth quoting. 
Yon Fiirstenberg, the founder of the college at Minister, writes to the 
princess : " It is true we have aimed throughout Mitri's whole educa- 
tion to secure him against the blind following of strange views or 
prejudices ; but he is young, weak, and vain. The fame of Wash- 
ington is dazzling for him : he would very likely accept his opinions, 
even his manners, out of veneration for him and to please him. We 
know the impression a famous man makes upon a youth ; but who 
of us has any knowledge of Washington's religious and moral prin- 
ciples, of his political honesty?" At last the young prince embarked 
from Rotterdam, under the charge of a priest, and with letters rec- 
ommending him to the care of Bishop Carroll, of Baltimore, "the 
father of the Church in America." 

Scarcely had he touched the shores of Maryland, we are told, 
when he made up his mind to abandon Europe and his brilliant 
career, his family and friends, and the society of his equals in things 
social and intellectual, and enter upon the life of a missionary priest, 
buried in the heart of a vast wilderness and surrounded only by 
people who were in all cases rough and uncultivated and in some 
cases quite uncivilized. It seems impossible that such a decision 
should have been arrived at by a youth of twenty-two without some 
strong outside influence brought to bear. There seems to have 
been something of delay and a spirit that was a little less than 
frank in the way the news of his project was communicated to his 
friends at Minister, through them to his mother, and through her to 



25 

Prince Gallitzin. The princess did not receive the news with pleas- 
ure, as her son had hoped she might, for, as before, she doubted his 
constancy and strength of mind. It was a year ere she was con : 
vinced he had done wisely, but then she entered heart and soul into 
his plans, without, apparently, a selfish thought bestowed upon the 
fact that he was lost to her for this world. His father's displeasure 
and grief can be readily imagined. An only son, the hope of his 
race no less than the pride of his immediate family, to bury himself 
in the bosom of an alien Church, and the depths of an almost un- 
known and distant land ! Authority at a distance would have had 
but little effect ; yet the way in which the disappointed father re- 
signs himself to the inevitable and expresses his affection for the 
son who has so blasted his hopes is so sturdy and so noble that most 
of our sympathy with the participants in the triangular family dis- 
cussion goes with him. 

In three years after his landing on our shores, the young prince 
had completed his seminary course, taken the lower orders, and 
been consecrated priest. From the courage and intrepidity with 
which he grappled ever afterward with the toils and dangers and 
persecutions of his life, we should conclude that it was a desire 
for combat and exertion that had led him to embrace his vocation, 
were we not told that he himself explained his decision as having 
resulted from the unquiet, convulsed state of Europe as compared 
with the "tranquil, peaceable, and happy situation of the United 
States, together with some consideration, naturally suggested by 
these events, on the vanity of worldly grandeur and preferment." 
He was the first priest whom the Catholic Church in this country 
could claim as entirely her own, having been both educated and 
consecrated on her soil. 

The exact extent of the sacrifice that Gallitzin made when he 
embraced a life of missionary work cannot be understood without a 
fuller description of the state of the country and of the Church than 



26 

I can enter into here. The first Catholic colony had been founded 
at Baltimore in 1634. All the churches in the country remained 
Under the charge of the vicar-general of London until the Revolu- 
tion, and the first bishop, Carroll, was appointed in 1789 only. It is 
hard to picture to ourselves the then distressed and disorganized 
condition of a Church now so flourishing. The Catholic population 
was widely dispersed and miserably poor, — made up, moreover, of 
the most discordant elements. Its clergy were foreigners of all sorts, 
and unable, very often, to sympathize with — even to speak intel- 
ligibly to— the congregations under their charge. At first, Gallitzin 
was an itinerant missionary, — indeed, few priests at that time were 
anything more, — wandering through vast tracts of the roughest 
country in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Many legends 
are told connected with this period of Gallitzin 's life, detailing how 
he cast out very palpable devils and overcame with supernatural aid 
of the most visible kind all doubting inquirers with whom he came 
in contact, and obstinate heretics who had never even gone so far as 
to doubt. The spiritualistic stories of to-day do not exceed in fan- 
tastic detail and apparently well-authenticated endorsement these 
last century tales of possessing spirits, of warning, threatening voices, 
and of clear, prophetic visions. 



A TOILER IN THE WILDERNESS. 

In 1799, after four years of incredible hardship, during which he 
had become thoroughly acquainted with the character both of the 
country and its people, he obtained permission to settle in the re- 
motest district of Pennsylvania which the Church had yet invaded, 
the wildest, rudest, and most uninviting in all save the grandeur of 
its scenery and the fertility of its soil when once cleared of its 
tremendous forest-growth. At the place which he afterwards named 



2 7 

Loretto he built a little church of logs, which was dedicated with a 
solemn midnight mass, chanted in his magnificent voice on Christ- 
mas eve. The scene as we picture it is one of wild beauty no less 
than of impressive solemnity. His hearers had gathered from 
places within a radius of scores of miles. Some were members of 
his flock ; others, ruder and more ignorant still, had been drawn by 
rumors of an unaccustomed spectacle. They were as unlike the 
young soldier and courtier turned priest as was the rough little 
structure lined with evergreens stuck full of shining candles to the 
palaces where he had been born and bred. The snow, we are told, 
was waist-deep outside the church. 

I have no space to follow in detail the long record of the life and 
labors of Gallitzin, or "Father Smith," as for many years he was 
called, allowing no mention of his real name and rank to be made. 
At Loretto he dwelt till his death in 1840, leaving his immediate 
charge only to make toilsome and dangerous journeys still farther 
into the heart of the wilderness, where there was not even a log 
church to receive him, but where service was performed, often for 
the benefit of a single family, in kitchen, barn, or stable. For very 
short visits he went only at the rarest intervals and on necessary 
business to Baltimore and Philadelphia. More than once he refused 
tempting suggestions of preferment, even of the mitre itself. His 
desire had from the first been to build up a community trained, or- 
dered, and governed in the strictest accordance with the precepts of 
Christianity and the Church, free from that alloy of worldliness 
which to all but enthusiasts appears an inevitable ingredient in 
human communities. He undertook a vast task, for he constituted 
himself in the fulfillment of it the guide and ruler of his people in 
their worldly as in their spiritual concerns. He was imperious, 
doubtless, very often, but only with the worldly scoffer and the un- 
repentant evil-doer. With all others he was as tender and humble 
as the lowliest woman. Autocrat as he grew to be over his scattered 



28 

and incongruous flock, where the Irish and the German elements 
were never long at peace, can we wonder that he became an object 
of persecutions, slanders, envyings, and jealousies of every kind? 
His rule was denounced as tyrannical, even unjust ; his motives were 
questioned, his private character assailed, complaints were carried 
time and again to the bishop, and a rival settlement, with a rival 
priest, established itself at his very doors. His patience, firmness, 
and meekness combined seemed to have been almost superhuman, 
and they conquered entirely in the end. At the time of his death 
his enemies were silenced,— many of them, indeed, converted into 
his warmest adherents. His death was lamented far and wide as a 
public calamity. 

The persecutions which he was forced to endure were not a tenth 
part so distressing to Father Gallitzin, however, as the pecuniary 
troubles which came upon him without any fault of his own save 
that he trusted in the promises of his friends at home. His father, 
who died in 1803, always maintained that his son had formally re- 
nounced all claims on the estate. This the son as firmly denied. 
The property all went to the princess, who, finding that on account 
of his apostasy and expatriation she could leave no part of it safely 
to her son, bequeathed it at her death, in 1806, to her daughter, who 
promised to share it equally with Demetrius. In order to make sure 
that it would go to the Princess Mimi, and not to collateral relations, 
Gallitzin was urged by his mother to come home for a time and at- 
tend to the legal transactions himself. This he at first thought of 
doing, but finally concluded that a separation from his struggling 
flock would be too great a wrong to them. His allowance came 
but sparingly and at long intervals. It is impossible to decide 
to-day whether the blame was wholly due then and later to the dis- 
turbed state of Europe and the difficulty of remitting money with 
safety, or in part at least to the culpable negligence of his sister and 
her various agents. Suffice it to say that he never received the portion 



2 9 

of the estate which his mother had promised him and his sister had 
sworn to deliver over, and never saw his way clear to go home and 
claim it for himself. When he first settled at Loretto, and was in 
constant expectation of large remittances from home, he judged 
that the best way to insure the speedy settlement and steady pros- 
perity of the parish would be to buy large tracts of land in his own 
name and sell them again in small portions and at low rates, to 
be paid for at the convenience of purchasers. Part of the land, 
moreover, he retained in his own hands as a trust property, which 
should in future insure a sufficient income for the Church's establish- 
ment at Loretto. Owing to his failure, in spite of constant prom- 
ises, to obtain any but a comparatively small portion of the large 
fortune that should have been his, financial embarrassment pursued 
him through the whole course of his life. It is easy to say that he 
was in constant terror for years lest a very short time would see his 
total ruin, but it is not so easy to imagine his feelings during those 
years when he felt that ruin for him would be ruin as well for his 
beloved church establishment and for hundreds of poor people 
whom he loved and who had confided in his judgment, who had 
even come into the wilderness at his solicitation. This last bitter 
trial was spared him, and when he died his Church was flourishing. 
His dreams of her educational establishments have realized them- 
selves, whatever may be said of the surrounding community that 
was to have been so true a model of a Christian people. The 
Catholics around Loretto to-day, in so far as a stranger can judge, 
are about like the Catholics — and Protestants— to be found else- 
where. 

Loretto is only some five miles distant from Cresson, and is 
situated on the slope of one of those broad, shallow vales which 
are so characteristic of the Allegheny. Gallitzin's rude little home, 
with its adjoining chapel, is still intact, but the church of his day has 
been replaced by a great brick structure, in front of which stands his 



3Q 

monument. Near it is a large building, where the Sisters of Mercy 
have a boarding-school, and on the opposite slope of the valley, 
buried in trees, is a college under the direction of the Franciscan 
Brothers, whither young men come from all parts of the country to 
be educated. In the midst of the smiling prosperity of the region, 
and remembering the importance to the whole country of the insti- 
tutions that Gallitzin founded, we find it hard to believe that 
only eighty years have passed since he consecrated his little log 
chapel, and that it was then the only sanctuary of his faith between 
Lancaster and St. Louis. 



THE LAND OF MINE AND FURNACE. 

When we have made acquaintance with all that Cambria County 
has to show in the way of antiquities and natural beauty, — when its 
lovely drives have become familiar, when the Portage Road and its 
ruins have been studied, when we have visited Loretto and the 
name of Gallitzin is well known and well beloved, when we have 
dined at that shady little inn in Ebensburg which recalls the 
"Golden Lion " or the " Stork " or " Palm-Branch " of some Ger- 
man village, — there is still much remaining in the vicinity to attract 
us. If we care for modern industries, — for man as well as nature, 
and his present work as well as his past history, — if we can amuse 
and instruct ourselves with the problems and triumphs of practical 
science, there could be no better field for us than this. From the 
mining of coal and iron to the final processes by which the latter is 
transformed into shapes the most complicated, the most delicate, 
and the most ingeniously serviceable to man, there is no stage of 
the labor which may not be studied within the distance of an 
hour's journey from Cresson. The whole country is underlaid with 
beds of ore and metal. As we drive down to Hollidaysburg amid 



3i 

the relics of the " Portage" and over the steep, wooded roads, we 
come at short intervals on dark holes in the mountain-side, or long 
"shoots" to bring the material down from a higher level to the 
turnpike. Here coal is dug for local consumption, and is transported 
in winter on sledges to the farmer's very door. Lilly is a large 
mining village, right on the line of the present railroad. Its streets 
are filled with begrimed men, their faces and their clothes of a uni- 
form sooty complexion, and each wearing the tiny lantern which 
the world over is the miner's badge. One is almost disappointed 
not to hear the hearty " Gliick auf!" which is the miner's specific 
greeting in every part of the Fatherland, and which, to those who 
there first made acquaintance with the grimy fraternity, seems as 
characteristic of it as the lantern or the coal-dust itself. 

But if we would see what a primitive Pennsylvanian mining vil- 
lage and its inhabitants are like, we cannot do better than make 
the excursion to "Bell's Gap," which is locally celebrated for the 
beauty of the scenery. Running down the railroad to a point a few 
miles east of Altoona, we take a little branch road that goes at 
right angles to the main line, some nine miles up into the mount- 
ain-pass. The memory of a magnificent October morning comes to 
me as I write. A train of empty cars was about to go up for coal, 
and a sort of little open wagon was attached for our accommoda- 
tion in front of the engine. It might have been a somewhat dan- 
gerous mode of traveling had the speed been great, and even 
where it took us fifty minutes to cover the nine miles it was, at all 
events, an exciting mode. Around the edge of the mountain we 
crept, crossing from the side of one peak to the side of its neighbor 
over fragile, many-storied trestles. To every finger-tip we felt 
each throb of reserved power in the body of the docile giant so 
close behind us. But a strength so near at hand seemed to become 
part of ourselves, and, with the free view of the snake-like rails 
before us, we felt we were, in some occult, inspiring way, the 



32 

authors of our own smooth, resistless progress. Mist on the 
mountain-tops, shadows of cloud, and gleams of sun through the val- 
leys brought out the autumn tints most beautifully. Brighter single 
trees— more scarlet maples, for instance, and ruddier oaks— I had 
seen in other places in other years, but I had never seen a place 
where the rolling hills formed such superb vistas, where the various 
trees were so exquisitely blended, where the proportion of ever- 
greens was so exactly right, and where the peaks and slopes had 
been so little disturbed by the charcoal-burner's axe, or by the fire 
that has scarred so much of the Adirondack country and so many 
miles along Lake George. The trees were in fullest leaf, and 
scarce two of the same kind seemed to grow together, — so that the 
shape of each was defined as far as the eye could see it against the 
slightly-contrasting colors of its neighbors. And these colors I had 
never seen so exquisitely delicate, so variously shaded. There was 
no violence, not a crude tint, but the very perfection of bright 
browns, and dull reds, and yellows both dull and bright, — yellows 
as deep and permanent-looking as the green of the pines, or as 
evanescent and fairy-like as the mist that crept among them. 

There is no view from the end of the line. The road runs its 
head into the mountain-side, where lie the treasures that it seeks. 
A cluster of gray-painted frame houses forms the nucleus of the 
village. The forest-paths on every hand are straggling streets 
of ruder dwellings — simple log huts or board shanties, which 
make one shiver to think of long winters spent within their paper 
walls. 

The men are at work in the mines, and our attention must needs 
confine itself to the women of the village and such stray members of 
the working sex as are either above or below the grade of a miner. 
There are some rather ruffianly-looking ne'er-do-weels whom one 
ranks at once in the last-named class, while social superiority is rep- 
resented by the country doctor and attorney and the capitalist — 



33 

judge or general, I have forgotten just what the title happened to be 
— whose name distinguishes more than one locality in the neighbor- 
hood. The artist who would fill his sketch-book with rustic figures 
from such a scene as this must be content with the individual, and 
that only of a grotesque kind : he must look neither for beauty nor 
for picturesqueness. There is nothing to be seen among the women 
which even hints of a beauty past, present, or possible of imagining. 
There is no delicate grace suggested, such as we see developed in 
our own better classes. There is none of the rugged and healthy 
womanhood we have seen among the peasantry of other lands. 
And there is scarce a trace of the neat and self-reliant alertness 
which so often makes a homely, middle-aged New-England woman 
attractive to all observers. The types are not only unbeautiful, but 
most uninteresting. There is seldom an appearance of health, never 
a look of neatness. Almost every woman looks unhappy, and all look 
tired and worn and ill and dull. Here on the top of the mountain 
there can be no malaria to give this look we know so well among the 
farming population of the lowlands of the West. But the pure air is 
probably no sufficient antidote against the bad food and hard labor 
and severe cold with insufficient shelter which form the basis of this 
monotonous existence. 

No two towns could be less alike than the two which are chief 
in Cambria County, — Ebensburg and Johnstown. The former lies qui- 
etly at the end of a tiny branch line, sleepy and old and Catholic and 
agricultural. The latter is divided by the rails of the great highway 
itself, and is new, rough, and busy with the rush of huge mills and 
factories and the throb of perpetually-passing trains. It is not dusty 
like Ebensburg, but grimy ; not breezy, but smoky ; not spread on 
top of the mountain, but cramped into a six-sided little valley at 
the junction of two rivers. Steep hills enclose it almost entirely, 
their wooded sides visible in every direction over the house-tops. 
The gap in the mountain where the river finds a westerly exit is filled, 



34 

as we see it from the town, by the railway viaduct and the Cambria 
Iron Works' many chimneys with their banks of smoke. The town 
is but a dependence of the works and of the minor industries which 
have grown up about them. The few fine residences are owned by 
men high in the company's service and rich with its earnings, while 
the streets of countless little dwellings, each with a family likeness 
to the other, tell of a long roll of workmen busy in its mills or in the 
coal-mines that feed them, disgorging their black nutriment almost 
directly into the gaping furnace-mouths. If we climb one of the long, 
winding, yet very steep hill-roads and reach the level table-land that 
spreads its fields and forest broadly toward the west, we soon see 
a different style of farm from the small holding and shabby little 
tenement of the mountain farmer. The Cambria Company, secur- 
ing its mineral rights, thought best to buy the property out and 
out, and, farming it principally for hay crops for its own consump- 
tion, shows it to us in broad clover-fields beautiful in their extent 
and neatness. 

The tourist who travels for pleasure only does not often stumble 
on such hostelries as those which afford us accommodation in Johns- 
town. Here we may make, perhaps, our first acquaintance with the 
provincial hotel, kept, not for the tourist or the summer boarder, but 
for the commercial traveler. The preternaturally early breakfast- 
hour and the twelve o'clock dinner tell of business habits which we 
had thought extinct with a previous generation. Whatever else may 
be missing from the bedrooms, we are sure to find in each a long ex- 
tension-table of many leaves for the use of the errant salesman. 
Through some open door we can always see one piled high with 
samples of the latest fashions as adulterated for the provincial mar- 
ket. In 1835, when the "Portage" was being built, Johnstown was 
a quiet little village clustering about the canal basin and with 
elderbushes growing high in the main street. 



IRON AND STEEL— A BESSEMER BLAST. 

The Cambria Company's iron-works are among the largest and 
best-appointed in the country, and there are, moreover, vast wire- 
mills in the town, where small articles of many sorts are manufac- 
tured from the heavy wire that conies to them from the iron-works 
proper. One does not soon tire of watching their curious processes, 
in many of which the clever machine requires no assistance, save 
that of a boy to see that it does not get out of order. We may watch, 
for instance, how the barbed wire for fences is prepared by a machine 
whose working is so simple as to be understood at first sight by the 
least initiated. Two long wires enter the machine, on top of which 
lie two others in small coils. As the main wires pass between these 
two which are to form the barbs, their ends insert themselves be- 
tween and twist around the main ones, and are then cut off short by 
a pair of shears which come out to snip at the right moment and then 
retire with a vicious precision quite comical to see. The long wires 
then twist themselves together and reel themselves into large coils 
ready for sale. And all this is done in plain sight, in the twinkling of 
an eye, by the unaided machine, which takes up no more space, by 
the way, than an ordinary centre-table. 

In contrast to the noise and glare and rush of places where 
metal in any shape is treated hot are the rooms in the wire-mills 
where heavy wire is drawn in a cold state into grades of greater 
tenuity. The machines look not only simple but ineffective in their 
quiet working, and the absence of fire is the absence of all excite- 
ment and picturesqueness. But it is all the more wonderful, per- 
haps, to see the great wire rods gradually becoming less and less in 
diameter till they are finished into little shining coils of stuff as fine 
as a hair and as smooth as a silken thread. 

Daylight must be used, of course, to inspect all such minor pro- 
cesses as these. And daylight alone reveals the vast scale on which 

(35) 



36 

the main work is prosecuted and permits us to study the modus of 
its action and realize its marvelous results. But at night, when the 
factories are at rest, the iron-mills roar on, and it is then that their 
weird impressiveness is best revealed. Night after night, so long as 
we are within its reach, the infernal attraction lays hold of us and 
draws us within its fiery circle. Night after night we are bewildered 
and excited by the rush and noise and force and glare of the gigantic 
conflict between man and the brute material which he conquers 
and moulds to his will at last by the well-directed power of his 
fearful allies, flame and steam. 

The great yard at night is a treacherous field of darkness, a 
labyrinth of tracks, where tiny engines puff and sneeze and jerk 
about their loads of black or still incandescent metal, rushing hither 
and thither at tangents impossible to calculate in the enshrouding 
gloom, and helping us by no civility of head-lights or cautionary 
signals. For this is their home, their private domain, and when the 
public intrudes upon it the public is alone responsible for keeping 
itself out of harm's way. We grope about in a half panic toward 
one or another of the vast buildings which flank the yard on all its 
sides, some silent and dark, some disgorging light and noise in all 
profusion. On the one hand tower the vast stacks of the blast- 
furnaces, which roar day and night through uninterrupted months 
for their endless meal of ore and fuel. Far off in another direction 
the long, low rolling-mills show through their open doors a red-hot 
interior, with black, hurrying figures and winding streaks of fiery 
metal. But dominating the whole, brighter and fiercer and noisier 
than all, are the Bessemer steel-works, and here we stop first to see 
the very apotheosis of our century, — an apotheosis of iron, water, 
fire, and their forces in resistless combination. Mr. Ruskin has 
done what he could to disgust us with steam, its processes and its 
results. We wait for a subtler and more daring critic to point out 
its superb picturesqueness, its imaginative and artistic side. We 



37 

cannot fail, however, to realize them for the moment if we stand 
awhile on this little platform high up on one side of the huge raftered 
building where the Bessemer blast is in progress. From this plat- 
form a boy controls with half a dozen levers the hydraulic forces 
which lift and lower and swing the machinery of giant cranes and 
buckets and ingots and converters with which the tiny, hurrying 
human figures do their task. The ruddy glare reveals all the infer- 
nal beauty of the scene, but covers up and glorifies the dirt and 
grime we know must be there. We follow this ' ' Bessemer pro- 
cess," — the most grandly picturesque, perhaps, of all the processes 
by which metal is treated, — not for scientific but for aesthetic satisfac- 
tion. We see one end of the building taken up by a vast accretion 
of chimneys and troughs and ladders and platforms. In front, just 
under the great, gaping chimney-mouths high up in the air, hang- 
two huge cylindrical receptacles, — the "converters," — into which 
the hot iron is poured to be deprived entirely of its carbon and then 
doctored by the addition of a certain given quantity thereof, — which 
addition of just the right amount transforms it into steel. There are 
other processes for securing the proper quantum of carbon, and no 
more, to the metal under treatment. But, whatever may be the 
relative scientific and practical success of this which has made the 
name of Bessemer famous, there is, picturesquely speaking, no pro- 
cess to be even remotely compared with it. The converters, in 
alternation, are tipped down to be filled with a stream of fluid iron, 
and, as they are tilted up into place beneath the chimney-mouth, the 
whole building is filled with a shining rain of sparks, each like a 
distinct and much-magnified snow-crystal. The blast of air which 
is to bear away the carbon is forced through the contents of the con- 
verter, to bellow from its top up the chimney and out into the sky 
above with a deafening roar and a blinding glare. For some fifteen 
minutes the blast continues, the color and intensity of the immense 
flame varying as the metal loses its carbon. From these variations 



38 

of tint and density the "blower" who superintends it judges how 
the blast progresses, and knows when to give the signal for tipping 
and emptying the converter just as the carbon is all exhausted and 
before the metal is burned. As the converter swings down,— con- 
trolled, as I have said, by the little lever at our elbow, — all the glare 
that has gone before seems as darkness compared with that from the 
incandescent metal pouring into the huge ingot-mould awaiting it. 
The colors of the liquid, almost etherealized metal in the different 
stages of the process are as various as they are beautiful, — now 
red of many grades, now orange, now pale yellow, and some- 
times, when seen in little streams, a lavender too intense for steady 
gazing. 

The rail-mill, where the short, thick bars of metal are rolled out 
in a few moments into the requisite length and shape, is picturesque 
enough, but in the wire-mill we shall see a sight as remarkable for 
grace and fascination as the Bessemer blast is remarkable for power 
and impressiveness. A long line of "rolls," through which the 
metal is successively passed, stretches across an iron-floored space, 
and in front of them stand a row of lads ready with their tongs to 
catch and control the end of the fiery-wire in its swift passage. The 
thick bar passes between the revolving cylinders which constitute 
the first pair of rolls, and comes out attenuated to a certain extent. 
The end is caught in the tongs and inserted between the next pair, 
passing through, of course, in a reverse direction to that in which it 
has traversed the first. This process is repeated a number of times, 
the wire growing thin and long with supernatural rapidity. The 
longer it grows, the more "slack," so to speak, there is to be con- 
trolled as it issues from one pair of rolls to be inserted in the next. 
It is this which makes the process so strikingly picturesque to the 
observer and so dangerous to the operator. Yards upon yards of 
the graceful, serpentine stuff, which looks so pliable but is so stiff 
and jerky and intractable, accumulate between the pairs of rolls, and 



39 

with the motion of his tongs the workman must control it so that it 
neither entangles itself nor injures him. When the end of the pro- 
cess approaches and the length of the wire is very great, the services 
of another workman are required to seize the slack with his tongs 
and run backward with it across the iron floor, while his comrade 
manages the end. The long coils rise and waver high in the air in 
their rapid flight with a grace that is indescribable, and cover the 
ground with huge, fiery, snake-like curves in swiftest motion. All 
the rolls are running at once, of course, a fresh bar being started as 
soon as the preceding one has left the first pair of rolls ; and the 
wild motions of the metal itself and of the many lads who struggle 
with it in its apparently frantic efforts to free itself from their control 
make an exciting spectacle from which it is almost impossible to tear 
ourselves away. We watch for an ending, a lull which will relax our 
interest ; but the always-beginning, never-ending process continues 
without a break. There is no small sense of personal danger to add 
its spice to our enjoyment. It seems momentarily impossible that 
the burning streak should not get the mastery and cease to coil itself 
so safely near our feet. Accidents to the rollers seem always immi- 
nent, and are, indeed, more frequent here than in any other part of 
the works. A false step in the backward run over the slippery iron 
floor is surely disastrous. An end of wire missed by the tongs 
means, very likely, a hole through arm or body. And not very long 
ago, we are told, a workman got himself inside instead of outside 
the immense coil that formed and wavered over his head as he 
inserted the end of the wire between the rolls. In a moment he 
was cut in twain as the swift revolution drew the metal line taut 
against the machine. Dangerous as the labor is, it seems strange 
that lads and quite young boys should usually undertake it. We are 
told, however, that their greater quickness and agility stand them in 
better stead than would the presumably cooler heads of their elders. 
As the wire issues finished from the last "pass," the end is again 



4o 

caught and presented to a wheel which reels it up into the coils we 
know in our shops, and it is then thrown aside to cool. Long in the 
telling, this process is swift enough in reality. It takes some forty- 
five seconds only for the bar to enter the first pair of rolls, traverse 
them all, be coiled up as five hundred feet of wire, and tossed aside 
to make room for the next-comer, which is already awaiting the 
services of the wheel. 

The night is far advanced when we cross the yard once more. 
It is partly lit at times by the glare from the Bessemer chimneys, and 
anon covered with utter darkness as the converter is tilted down for 
a while. Leaving its dangers at last behind us, we pass along the 
bank of the river under the great railroad viaduct which spans it. 
A solitary locomotive, symmetrical, polished, docile, glides slowly 
over our heads. Surely it is alive in this magic midnight, — a living, 
magnificent child of steam and iron and man's intelligence. Gigantic 
level rays from the Bessemer building far behind us fall upon it and 
on the rocky river-bed and the huge bridge-arches, and across and 
beyond them up to the wooded hill-side, where the hoarse voices of 
the miners and the occasional flashing of their lights show that coal 
is mined as well as burned by night. Is there no poetry in our nine- 
teenth century and its work? Is there no majesty, no impressive- 
ness, no food for the imagination, in its iron, and steam, and flame, 
and speed, and power ? 

Reprinted from Lippincott's Magazine. 



Ml 



